Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data may be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power, . . . ). For instance, a system may use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and others.
Generally, wireless multiple access communication systems may simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile devices. Each mobile device may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from base stations to mobile devices, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from mobile devices to base stations. Further, communications between mobile devices and base stations may be established via single-input single-output (SISO) systems, multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, and so forth.
Mobile devices that utilize a single antenna for transmission and reception commonly operate with limited data transmission rates. In order to yield higher data transmission rates (e.g., multi-megabit speeds), wireless communication systems may implement MIMO systems. MIMO systems, in combination with space-time coding and other such data processing techniques, can achieve data transmission throughput several times greater than single antenna radio systems.
MIMO systems commonly employ multiple transmit antennas and multiple receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the multiple transmit and receive antennas may be decomposed into a plurality of independent channels, which may be referred to as spatial channels. Each of the independent channels corresponds to a dimension. Moreover, MIMO systems may provide improved performance (e.g., increased spectral efficiency, higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and received antennas are utilized.
Mobile devices, however, oftentimes have physical constraints (e.g., limited volume, size, . . . ) that can impact implementation of multiple antennas therewith. For instance, performance of conventional mobile devices commonly has suffered in comparison to single antenna performance due to such physical limitations. Accordingly, arranging multiple antennas that support operation in multiple frequency bands in a small form factor device can be difficult to achieve at low cost and in an aesthetically pleasing manner.